Come Play With Us
by HowlingAngel
Summary: Once upon a time a little girl wanted to be a fairy tale princess. She didn't account for real faeries.


There are things in this world that are not what we expect them to be. Simple objects, places, people that should, could, would, aren't. Gateways into a reality that is that same as our own but warped, different, unseen by those who aren't looking in the right places. Through the hole in a ring, the eye of a needle, the gap under a fence, the space between a light-post and a wall, out of the corner of your eye. If you look in the right places, what you see when you sleep isn't a fantasy. What you see when you sleep isn't always a happy dream.

There are people in this world who stumble upon these gateways,

_-come play with me-_

these passages to the unseen reality. For in truth, it is not so hard to find them, it is just the matter of believing you did.

Once upon a time, for it was once in a place and a time. Once upon a time, a silly little girl moved from the lush greenery of the country to the big city of smoke and iron. From the proper settings of magical happenings to the land of death to fairy (faerie) tales. She was unhappy, for she was a voracious believer of Disney-fied circumstances, and how will the handsome prince find her if she doesn't discover the ivy-covered castle in the forest behind her house? Things were not going as planed.

In retribution of her (mean/nasty/evil) dear parents choice to remove her from her future kingdom, she deemed it necessary to run away from home. Once she did, she would find a mystical train/cottage/_something_ that would whisk her off to a fairy (not faerie) tale land of talking bunnies and grandmother trees. The fact she was in the big, bad city with big, bad people who did big, bad things after dark was inconsequential to her destiny. Cinderella backpack slung over one shoulder, peanut-butter sandwich in hand, the silly little girl wandered to meet her fate.

Fate is fickle and is not so much a set plan for the universe but a gossiping courtesan who flirts with shadows. Our sweet, silly little girl traveled through the big city, and despite venomous opinions on moving day, found it to be quite the fascination as the sun set and the lights burned. Cars whooshed with brights on high, tracing trails of red neon thorough the air to be traveled by dark glittery insects who whispered past trumpeting horns and roaring, lion wheels to bent trees encased in iron gates

_-branches stretched and thrust like arms begging, begging and shadowed bark face twisted 'No more iron'-_

while buildings tall and broad stretched into the sky like passages to the stars.

The signs encased in plexiglass shimmer with the distorted reflections of the people walking by, throwing proportions and straight lines into deformed creatures of a hideous imagination (reality). Watch the nice man become a fat grinning, leering monster - beware the suited woman, who has claws and seaweed hair - the child is a giant with a dripping maw.

The silly little girl walked and walked. She watched the sun set while she ate her peanut butter sandwich. She watched the reflections in the plexiglass. She was lost. Lost

-_dead of night, nowhere to go-_

in the middle of the big, bad city as the safe, sunny people disappeared to make way for the men in chains and dark clothes and the women with ripped tights and too much lipstick. Night uncovers the refuse of society, they with tired eyes and wicked thoughts.

The silly silly girl got very very frightened. She was a princess-to-be after all and not prepared for the scary dark that was so very different from the dark of her pretty little bedroom. Too much is disfigured when the shadows are longer and the people are strangers and the air is cold and nothing looks right and where to go and _how do I get back and I want to go home-_

The no-longer-quite-so-silly little girl ran very far and fast, over sidewalk junk hill and around streetlight bend. She ran until - _alas! -_ she saw the central park, free from frightening iron walls and too-bight neon and deep shadows of concrete jungle. Lush green, even in the dark of the midnight hour, proved a reprieve for a country girl. Just natural bark and leafy brush with no harsh metal-stone to cage her in

-_ you were safer with the iron barriers-_

and dark strangers to glare at her.

She wandered, happy for a memory of home (real home). She had read about this park; miles wide with a seashell castle beside a lake. How lovely! Perhaps the prince will find her after all! I shall live in the shell castle and reign in my wood. The girl trotted off toward her palace, ignorant of beady, glittery eyes watching from the nooks of trees and crevices of rocks. Eyes connected to bodies that bent and curved with scales and fur and skin and fang and wing, too big and too small for Animal Encyclopedia pages.

-_see who's wandered at our door-_

She wandered farther into the foliage as flitting beasts followed, singing lovely, sickeningly sweet songs of love and friends and if-we-work-together. She paused her painful serenade, hearing music. Oh, the royal court must have heard of her approach! They'll welcome her with a grand reception and a ball, and a handsome prince will profess undying love with flowers and a diamond necklace that sparkles with the hue of a thousand rainbows.

The silly, unfortunate little girl clears the last of the trees. The castle is there. The lake is there. A hundred hundred bodies are there in festivities. They are not human.

_-a tree woman with burned legs and stiff, leaved hair drinks wine from a skull-_

_-bent, red _thing_ with sharp bristles along it's back and hooves whispers into the ear of a spindly blue man with shimmery scales and large, slit eyes-_

_-a woman with orange, yellow pebbled skin crouches near the water, munching a bloody fish from clawed, webbed hands-_

_-tiny men with tinted opera glasses-_

_-people made of ivy weaving hammocks from mossy hair-_

_-_human people sprinkled among them, enchanted by the macabre elegance of their horrible appearance.

The silly little girl found her magical happily ever after in the arms of they who are not nightmares and feed her lovely food that isn't food and braid her hair with bells. Who glamour her with lovely, sparkly magic of endless possibility. The silly little girl never got her prince-

-_ but does that really matter in a real fearie tale?_


End file.
